Friday, February 03, 2006

I'm Jack's complete lack of surprise. THQ's oft delayed shooter is delayed once more, although word from the developer is that it's "on the stage of beta approval" ... whatever that means. Latest date is fourth quarter 2007, so there's plenty of time for it to get off that stage.

Everything about STALKER seems to exude overly ambitious game design, with it's emphasis on a realistic renderer, open-ended gameplay and robust multiplayer modes. My guess is that when it's finally released, at least one review will proclaim it could have been a Half-Life 2 killer ... if had only been released in Half-Life 2's lifetime.

Rumors that AGP is a completely obsolete slot ... well, they might not be completely exaggerated ... but at least Nvidia will release the 7800 GS for AGP (thanks ModPC). It's faster than it's 6800 ultra brother and apparently sports a moderately quiet fan. And here I didn't think I'd ever find a replacement for my fanless 6800.

I doubt that this is a sign of a turning trend though, and we'll see a new wave of high powered AGP cards. The hardware movement is still towards PCI-E. Still, it would be nice to see either ATI, Nvidia or both acknowledge that there is plenty of powerful AGP rigs still out there.

Odd, isn't it, that a company that threatens players for advertising sexual orientation ... to add commands to make references about sexual orienation?

Apparently these are examples from the World of Warcraft:

Male Taureen /silly audio: "Homogenized? No way, I like the ladies." Female Dwarf /silly audio: "I like my ale like I like my men, dark and rich. "Male Dwarf /silly audio: "I like my beer like I like my women, stout and bitter."

The way Blizzard's statement reads ... if you were to use these ingame and anyone was offended by them ... you could get warned or banned. But that is probably quite unlikely. So, Blizzard doesn't want you to proclaim any sexual orientation. Unless it's straight.

2old2play.com, the "older gamers paradise", has an editorial on the differences genre makes on online speech"

When gunning the community down in a first person shooter is normal that gamers offend the ‘gunned down’ using such words as “pwned”, “owned”, “no scoped your ass”, or “did you feel the prickle of my shotgun pickle?” The voice used in an FPS is often highly aggressive in nature and usually requires cursing and swearing both to offend and to complement. For what ever reason the FPS seems to bring out the kid in almost all of us. Usually this occurs in a game between friends, but more often then not you will also here this talk in a match of random gamers. It is suggested that you turn down your speakers when children are in the room.

Player 1 runs around a corner sees a very unskilled Player 2 and puts away his rail gun to pull out his “pea shooter” pistol and slowly caps Player 2 with five shots before they finally fall dead.

The response you never hear…

Player 1: Oh man, I totally got lucky on that one. I walked around the corner and caught you off guard. Best of luck man.

The average response…

Player 1: BOOM! Man if you had half the mad skills I have then I’d have used a bigger weapon. Pwned like a n00bzors bitch.

The "don't ask, don't tell" policy looks like it might land Blizzard in court. Lambda Legal is a big fish in the legal fight for gay rights, and they're none too happy with Azeroth's "don't instigate the homophobes" policy:

“You can’t tell gay and lesbian people that they have to be quiet so other folk won’t harass them,” Chase said. “If you want to stop harassment you have to stop the harassers not the victims.”

CrazyKinux is in the SEED Beta had has left a few screenshots and descriptions on his blog. Looks pretty sweet, with a distinct cel-shaded style to the characters, and a near comic feel to the UI. Being a beta, it naturally ends with a crash.

The class has the student complete three projects - a basic board game, a 2D shooter and then their own design. It also uses such bombs as Shaq Fu as well, contrary examples. I'm sure there are some stodgy types bemoaning that tuitions are going towards making, as my dad called it, Space Turkeys.

Yet, think about it. If you want your kid to become programming savvy ... and really , who doesn't ... right now I'd go get them a decent computer, a copy of Unreal Tournament 2004, and a short list of web sites. UnrealScript offers a Java-like language that can be developed without buying any extra software. Your kid could be learning object-orientated programming constructs for less than his first semester textbooks.

Thursday, February 02, 2006

I stumbled on Castle Galaxy, a blog which has some TV related info and also this Lost parody from Mad TV. It's got some spoilers, the bandwidth ain't great and it's only so-so funny ... but the "cameos" rule.

The games.slashdot version of the Carnival is now available. Definately the largest we've seen in a while and include a few new names, which is always nice. This marks the first time that the Carnival has ever "cut" any submissions from the list, a move which doesn't sit so well with me but it's hard to judge without seeing what was cut.

What the hell is up with this week and television? Medium? Repeat? House? Replaced with some hick talking about animal-human monsters. Which is fascinating, but I don't want animal-human monsters instead of edgy cynical hospital melodrama. Lost? Repeat.

Remember when television seasons were ... well, complete and didn't have a hiatus every other week while the actors detox and the writers pick up a couple of old shakespeare books for script ideas? Or whatever they do? No, I don't either.

I was going to post about the possible similarities between Oscar The Smoke Monster and a certain white balloon, but now I'm just worried about government sponsored lycanthropes. Thanks slow talking dude in a fancy suit for freaking me out.

Update: I've been informed by more than a few people that the hick in question is, in fact, President of the United States. I really thought he had darker hair and more of a speech impediment, but I've been assured that it is actually him. My bad.

Update: I've also been told that the government is indeed against the creation of hybrids and will actually not be funding Department of Defense "Weapon X" project. So that's good.

Would be the topics of the latest Esoteric Beat on Gamasutra. Funny, isn't it, how people keep insisting that gaming culture should be devoid of sexuality and how insanely wrong it is ... and yet we just can't stop talking about it. The Beat goes into some minor details on the Rascimatron, which is utterly unlike Woody Allen's Orgasmatron, some interesting uses for Google Maps and a really bad sexy game name Lula.

The "New Game Experience", which once caused Yoda to shudder as if a thousand kittens were being harrassed at the same time, of Star Wars Galaxies has found the attention of the Washington Post:

Longtime Galaxies fan Jenny Steberl, who once played the game as a "creature handler," canceled her account when her profession was removed from the game; she says she won't buy any more "Star Wars" merchandise for herself or for her two sons and called Sony's recent moves a "greedy grab for cash."

Blakely acknowledged that such reaction by some of the game's veterans was not a surprise and said the switch was made for the long-term success of the game as a business. "It was a tough decision we had to make," he said. "We knew we were going to sacrifice some players . . . [but] as a 'Star Wars' license, we should do a lot better than we have been doing."

I'm not going to really push any opinion on NGE one way or another, other than my previous "the demo didn't draw me away from Guild Wars". To be honest though, that's true for about 90% of demos, so it's not really earth shattering in any way.

Game Tunnel's M.Indie, back from his world tour with Prince, takes a look at Prairie Game's Minions of Mirth and determines that in this case, it's the players that make the game:

The end result of all this is that the community draws people into the game. It’s one thing to log into Everquest and see thousands of people, none of whom are the least bit interested in talking to you. It is another thing altogether to log into the Prairie Server and see a dozen friendly faces who will literally fight over who gets to answer your questions on how to start.

The latest Carnival of Gamers should be up at games.slashdot today. In related news, I'm going to sunset the Carnival IV Puzzle at the end of this month. So if you want some sweet ZeStuff swag, now is the time to do it.

SC: Yeah, I really was. I started playing in seventh grade, 1977. And I played incessantly, 'til probably 1981—four years.

AVC: What's the appeal?

SC: It's a fantasy role-playing game. If you're familiar with the works of Tolkien or Stephen R. Donaldson or Poul Anderson or any of the guys who wrote really good fantasy stuff, those worlds stood up. It's an opportunity to assume a persona. Who really wants to be themselves when they're teenagers? And you get to be heroic and have adventures. And it's an incredibly fun game. They have arcane rules and complex societies and they're open-ended and limitless, kind of like life. For somebody who eventually became an actor, it was interesting to have done that for so many years, because acting is role-playing. You assume a character, and you have to stay in them over years, and you create histories, and you apply your powers. It's good improvisation with agreed rules before you go in.

Both The Brother and The Girl pointed out this very peculiar tidbit from the recent preview of Super Princess Peach:

The Princess can't stay happy all the time, though. You'll also have to hit her with some negative vibes. Gloom makes Peach burst into tears. While she's crying, she runs much faster and becomes invincible. Her tears can also be used to make certain plants grow and start water wheels spinning. You don't want to be around Peach when she feels rage. During this emotional state, she bursts into flames, which is useful for torching foes and burning through wooden barriers. While raging, Peach also has a powerful stomp that shakes the ground when she jumps.

First, MGM licenses Stargate to Perception, an Australian company with a little experience in developing coin-op racing titles, to develop a first person shooter for PC and consoles. A fairly daunting task for any game studio and even more daunting for one trying to make such a drastic transition.

As we know now, that failed miserably. It was delayed, the project turned into a legal nightmare between Perception and JoWood and eventually Perception was forced to announce that they were going out of business.

So what does MGM do next? Announces the license is being used by Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment to build a MMORPG. Never heard of Cheyenne before? That's because they didn't exist before. From the name, I'm assuming they formed just to sign this license.

You have to be kidding. You go from one unknown developer to try and build a title for an increasingly difficult and saturated game genre ... to an even more unknown developer to build a title for an even more difficult and saturated game genre. Was there a meeting for this? Some kind of discussion? Nobody mentioned that perhaps, mayhap, just possibly ... this is a really stupid frakkin' idea?

No? Huh. That's a shame, because I'd love to see a good Stargate game. I just don't have high hopes of that happening anytime soon.

However for 3D games a four way method of control was not sufficient enough. So Nintendo decided to bring the analog stick to offer complete 3D control. However Nintendo themselves were not positive the controller would be a success, so they made sure to add the D-Pad to the left hand side of the controller. With the controller marked the absence of the “X” and “Y” buttons, but the addition of four “C” (Camera) buttons, that were on the right hand side of the controller. The best new button addition could be considered the “Z” trigger. The trigger was placed under the bottom of the controller, making it similar to the position of a trigger on a gun. It proved extremely useful in the First Person Shooter genre.

Gibbity is a web site which allows gamers to tag and rate games. Essentially that means if you're looking for a good strategy game, you can pop in there and find games that other people have deemed as both good and strategy. Following in the success of sites like del.iciou.us and flickr, this seems like a pretty solid idea. There's not a ton of content there just yet, but to be fair the service is still in beta ... so go give it a test drive.

From their site:

Here are a list of things that Gibbity is NOT (with respect to 37Signals):Gibbity is NOT Wikipedia. We don't aim to become the foremost people-powered authority on information about games. (Gibbity DOES aim to become the foremost authority on game popularity though, which is the key difference.)

Gibbity is NOT Amazon. We're not peddling the games listed on the site. (We will however, finance the site by running contextual ads. Please don't be offended by this; Gibbity was created by a third-worlder, and money is ALWAYS tight.)

Gibbity is NOT Gamespot/Firingsquad. We're not content creators or game reviewers, nor do we claim to know anything about games other than we like playing them.

Gibbity is NOT Kotaku/Joystiq. The only way we know how to recommend a game is by showing you a picture and telling you it has 1 gajillion registered fans. We're pretty subtle that way.

Gibbity is NOT Friendster/Orkut/etc. Although we encourage interaction between like-minded game fans, we're not looking to set people up, nor do we condone relationships with anything other than the latest console or platform.

David Utter over at WebProNews points out that it's not good PR to go after bloggers:

If you are a software maker producing a product that may be harmful to the hardware of innocent gamers, calling out the whistle-blowing blogger with a lawsuit threat may be generally regarded as a bad move.

When that blogger happens to be Cory Doctorow and his blog, Boing Boing, just happens to be the most heavily trafficked blog on the Internet, one should probably change "generally regarded as a bad move" to "what were you thinking, anyway?"

The software maker in question? Starforce, makers of the great malware which protects publishers from having their games copied by breaking the user's computer. Which, to be honest, is pretty brilliant. It's hard to get more secure than that and it's a shame that they can't just make the monitor explode in the process.

Here's another take on a topic I mentioned before, the role of interaction as it applies to art: all art is interactive. That's the perspective Ramin Ostad takes in this Gateway article:

Art, in almost all forms, is inherently interactive. Consider the supposed idea that in order for something to be art, it has to be non-interactive. What then would be the point? If no one was allowed to look upon the Mona Lisa—since viewing is how one would interact with a painting—would it still be considered a work of art? Could it be, if people could not gain any sort of insight or emotional significance from it? What if we were not allowed to listen to a fantastic opera? I think you get the idea. Such is trying to appreciate a game without actually playing it.

Indie starlet GameTunnel takes a look back on 2005 and hands some awards based on innovation. Naturally, it's a pretty interesting bunch. Facade takes top honors, which is I suppose is merited ... but I've never felt compelled to do more than read about the game so I wouldn't really know. I did try Oasis, which ranked second, and found it most addictive. I wasn't familiar with Rumble Box prior to this article, but it sounds worth a try.

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

That Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas might prove controversial in some way? Clearly, no rational person. It's a good thing you don't like to be sandbagged, James Woods, because it must really suck when that kind of thing creeps up on you.

Honestly, what a nit. Kinda like being in a porn and then complaining about all the sex.

In a revolutionary move, Indian development company Paradox Studios has signed up with Hollywood action star Van Damme. The Belgian born star will promote Kick Boxing and Van Dammage, games based on his style of kick boxing, which was created by Paradox’s 4-member team, with inputs from the actor’s personal instructor. The games will be released along with the release of Van Damme’s movies Second in Command and Hard Cops which are slated to release later this year.

"The fact that the battles can be boring, if not frustrating at times, makes most of the general gameplay rather uncompelling," says IGN.

These don't sound like video game review quotes for a million-selling title, but they are. Vivendi Universal Games' "50 Cent: Bulletproof," made by Majesco, just passed the platinum mark for retail sales, stacking the company coffers with $50 million. Not bad for a game that scored a middling 50/100 at Metacritic.com, a review compilation site that collects criticism of games, movies and music.

Much of this is old ground to seasoned gamers, naturally. As the gaming demographic widens, I'm sure it will only get worse as the industry realizes that there are more than few easy marks to be made. It's a lot easier to make a profitable game targeted against a specific market, despite the quality, as long as the market is large enough.

One could be optimistic and hope that publishers will use the profits of one type to develop more revolutionary or evolutionary games ... but by the time you get to the comparison of Pyschonauts to 50 Cent: Bulletproof, it's hard to keep one's chin up.

It's true. It's happened more times than I can count. Somewhere in public view, I'm declared a queer. Or a homo. Or sometimes something a little less polite. This usually occurs completely outside any discussion of sexuality.

And of course, it only happens online.

I don't really take offense to it ... I've known lots of gay people and never found anything wrong with being gay. However, I know they mean it as derogatory. And that's where I have a problem with it.

And yet, I've never seen a single person in any forum or game ever banned for harassing another person about their sexuality, presumed or otherwise.

Not once.

Which is centrally how I disagree with certain defenses of Blizzard's policy, including Finster's. Let's break down the argument here.

1. World of Warcraft is rated T for Teen, and as such there should be no talk of sex.

Except that World of Warcraft's content rating is for the content which Blizzard provides in the box. A parent should notice the whole "online experience" caveat. I'm quite positive Blizzard has about twelve different layers of protection between them and what people chat about. Parents who don't want their kids running into such unsavory terms as "GLBT" should really monitor their internet usage ... because I can assure them that there is a lot worse out there.

And even with all that, declaring a sexual preference is not the same as talking about sex. So saying "I'm gay" in no way breaks a T rated game.

Unless someone out there wants to argue that no T game should feature gay characters? Anyone want to try that one? Oh yeah, Campfire Fan in We Love Katamari ... I'm looking at you.

Which, I'm not against. Any online provider needs to be careful about the kind of content children, young teens, etc., gets access to ... which could range from porn to sexual predators. What I'm against is the idea that someone in WoW couldn't even mention being gay ... or gay friendly ... without triggering that "protection". This concept that a GLBT Guild instantly carries with it a brochure about gay sex is close-minded and ridiculous. So it's not really about protecting kids about sex, it's apparently about protecting them about the existence of homosexuality.

New flash. Being gay doesn't mean someone is a sexual pervert is who going to corrupt all that wander nearby with ribald tales of sailors and whores. I hate to break this to people, but most of the homosexual people I've known are really pretty tame. In fact, out of all the sexually orientated discussions I've had ... and I was a crisis line operator for five years ... heterosexual women by far exceed any other group I've known.

And I've heard this argument before. Not even about games. It went something like, "I don't want to have to explain to my kid why those two men were holding hands at the ball game." To which you have two choices in my book.

Don't have kids ... or don't take them outside.

3. Cybering is private, advertising a guild is public

Bull. I've seen WoW cyber-chats which would make a sailor blush ... and I don't even play the game. The hetero sex which is occuring in Azeroth is clearly not always being held in private. And Blizzard is clearly doing nothing about protecting kids from that kind of content.

When cybering goes unchecked and gay bashing goes unchecked, but advertising a GLBT guild does not ... well, that's just protecting the people who don't really need protection.

4. When I go to Azeroth, it's not about being gay or straight ... but orcs or elves.

Which is fine. Except that people a) do role-play in WoW quite a lot and b) there are immature players which will bring sex into the game regardless. I agree, when I play online the last thing from my mind is which way the Tank swings. However, it's silly to just assume that the rest of the online world agrees.

And if we were to take these two camps ... one being people trying to form a GLBT friendly guild to have a GLBT friendly atmosphere ... and another which uses sexual preference as an insult and a smear ... I've got a pretty clear idea of which group probably merits protection.

Between the GLBT friendly guild and your homophobic teenager ... I'm going with the guild every time. I've never been harassed by a gay friendly group in any game, ever. I was called a slut once in Diablo when another player realized that I was not, actually, female.

I'm simply tired of the implicit online agreement that it's OK to insult someone by sexual preference, or to assault female players for dates, as long as it's not "too bad". The only recourse some players have had in the past is to band together to keep away from such elements. Why do people think we've had such a rise in girl clans? It's not so much of a feminist statement as it is a method of keeping away from horny teenage boys.

And if Blizzard wasn't homophobic, they'd be assisting such guilds instead of banning them.

Sunday, January 29, 2006

I've always thought that in a rational world, the people who attack others for their sexual orientation are the ones who need to learn how the STFU. Naturally, many religious organizations, right wing "think tanks", the American military and now ... Blizzard disagrees with that notion.

Want to play World of Warcraft? That's fine, as long as you aren't broadcasting being anything but hetero:

Andrews' original posting read: "OZ [the name of her guild] is recruiting all levels ¦ We are not 'GLBT only,' but we are 'GLBT friendly'! (guilduniverse.com/oz)"

In her follow-up letter to the company, Andrews explained that there was an obvious misunderstanding and that she was not insulting anyone, but merely recruiting for a "GLBT friendly" guild.

The response from Blizzard was, "While we appreciate and understand your point of view, we do feel that the advertisement of a 'GLBT friendly' guild is very likely to result in harassment for players that may not have existed otherwise. If you will look at our policy, you will notice the suggested penalty for violating the Sexual Orientation Harassment Policy is to 'be temporarily suspended from the game.' However, as there was clearly no malicious intent on your part, this penalty was reduced to a warning."

Blizzard's stance was clear that recruiting for a guild using "GLBT" was inappropriate as, the company said, it may "incite certain responses in other players that will allow for discussion that we feel has no place in our game."

What kind of Sexual Orientation Harassment Policy protects the harassers? Sure, I understand the whole concept of "don't wear the gimp suit to work, Josh" and "stop bringing up bondage analogies to clients, Josh" ... but what if I was gay? I couldn't tell anyone about a Pride parade? Because they might be a homophobic asshole? Hey, the only way they'll stop being one is if their behavior is forced out into the open and correspondingly, society makes a sour face when they do.

It's OK to cybershag in some shack and apparently, and Blizzard is OK with that. How about being black? I mean, should players refrain from talking about their race because some white supremacist dickwad might be on the same channel? That's inane. There is even tell that Blizzard has started to crack down on Christian Guilds (scroll to the bottom). So it's essentially uncool to bring up anything about yourself that might be controversial to someone on the world's most popular MMO? Gee, that should be a short list ... of everything.

Comparatively, I've found two references to gay or GLBT friendly guilds in Guild Wars, Lyssa's Embrace and the Qweer Kult ... although I'm not how active they currently might be ... but I didn't see any signs of ArenaNet trying to shut them down. I've had a couple people just be plain, old fasioned, jerks in GW ... but honestly I don't remember much about anyone's preferences on one thing or another. Course ... I don't use teamspeak either...

Blizzard's policies are beyond ridiculous here. They apparently have decided that it is too difficult to monitor abusive behavior, so they choose to monitor anything that might incite abusive behavior. Shut up and play, in other words. What the hell is point of an MMO where the rule is just shut up and play?